Pepsi

The Thrill(er) Is Gone: When Pepsi finally gets around to airing its new Michael Jackson TV spots (which'll be when Jackson finally gets around to releasing his new album - probably early next year), will anybody care? The much-ballyhooed campaign - for which Jackson was reportedly given a piece of change in the $10 million-to-$15 million range - was recently screened for Pepsi bottlers, and the reactions, reports the current Adweek, were decidedly downbeat. "They saw the new spots, and I don't think they were all that impressed," said a Pepsi bottler spokesman.

This is how you build a neighborhood park in an age when Philadelphia no longer bothers funding such urban niceties: First enter a famous cola-maker's online contest to win micro-financing for good ideas. Next, start a Facebook page. Go to Twitter and blast all your friends. Provide the link to the website of said beverage company (Hint: Starts with P). And, since this is Philly, encourage everyone to vote early and vote often. If this shamelessly promotional social-networking scheme works, then maybe, just maybe, East Passyunk will find itself with $50,000 to turn the chaotic intersection at 12th and Watkins Streets into a "pop-up park" by the end of May. But only if you go to the website and start clicking right away on "Reclaim Concrete," says Clint Randall, a freshly minted urban planner who dreamed up the project - www.refresheverything.

"Looking for me?" Pepsi-Cola's latest Michael Jackson commercial - given the lead advertising spot in last night's Grammy telecast - closes with those words, whispered by Jackson in his feathery, Tinkerbell voice. You can accuse the soft drink maker of being profligate (Pepsi paid M.J. around $10 million for the latest three-year endorsement deal) but you can't acuse Pepsi of being humorless about its elusive Soda Star. Ever since he walked off with an unprecedented eight Grammys in 1984 - the year his hair caught fire during the filming of his first round of Pepsi commercials - everybody's been looking for M.J. We hear about the Elizabeth Taylor shrine in his mansion.

The poor girl's barely had time to get over her breakup with dream boat Justin Timberlake, and now Britney Spears is getting the heave-ho from Pepsi. After two years as the company's spokeswoman, 21-year-old Spears is being replaced by Destiny's Child R&B diva Beyonce Knowles. The company didn't have much to say about Spears, except that it won't renew her contract - estimated at $10 million - when it expires at the end of the month. Age can't be the issue - Knowles is also 21. But according to the New York Post, the reasons may be pragmatic: Spears has suffered major public-relations setbacks with the flop of her first movie, Crossroads, and the disastrous reviews that followed the opening of her Manhattan restaurant Nyla.

Rookie Greg Biffle played the fuel strategy game to win the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway. Biffle ducked into the pits to top off his gas tank under caution on lap 79 of the 160-lap race Saturday night. That gave him just enough to make it the rest of the way on one more stop. The former Busch Series and NASCAR Craftsman Truck champion was being pressured at the end by former series champion Bobby Labonte, but Labonte suddenly slowed coming through turn 2 on the final lap, out of gas. "I really didn't know what to do," Biffle said.

Wallingford-Swarthmore is the latest school district to become a battleground in the beverage-rights war between the nation's two soda giants, Pepsi and Coca-Cola. So far, Pepsi seems to have the edge in the district, according to Superintendent Sharon E. Parker, who said at a special school board meeting Monday night that both soft-drink companies had made offers. No details were divulged, but Parker said she would continue to meet with Pepsi representatives on what she termed a fact-finding mission.

This is how you build a neighborhood park in an age when Philadelphia no longer bothers funding such urban niceties: First enter a famous cola-maker's online contest to win micro-financing for good ideas. Next, start a Facebook page. Go to Twitter and blast all your friends. Provide the link to the website of said beverage company (Hint: Starts with P). And, since this is Philly, encourage everyone to vote early and vote often. If this shamelessly promotional social-networking scheme works, then maybe, just maybe, East Passyunk will find itself with $50,000 to turn the chaotic intersection at 12th and Watkins Streets into a "pop-up park" by the end of May. But only if you go to the website and start clicking right away on "Reclaim Concrete," says Clint Randall, a freshly minted urban planner who dreamed up the project - www.refresheverything.

When Coca-Cola offered Central Bucks schools $3.8 million for the right to sell its soft drinks there, school board members did not seem too concerned about the $10,000 check from Pepsi for those same rights that they had already cashed in 1995. The board's plan was to give that money back and sign with Coke. Now a costly lawsuit is looming. And Coca-Cola is threatening to pull out of the deal if the board does not resolve the issue by the end of the year. In a letter sent last week, Pepsi declared it will sue if its agreement with the board - which extends until fall of 2001 - is violated.

The largest soft-drink bottling plant in southern Africa lies behind a tidy brick wall in the industrial suburb of Germiston, where a sign heralds the headquarters of New Age Beverages Ltd., bottlers of Pepsi-Cola. That's about as close as one can get to a cold Pepsi in South Africa these days. The plant is empty. The equipment was crated up and shipped off to Russia four months ago after New Age Beverages collapsed in a war with rival Coke. It wasn't supposed to end this way. Pepsi was reintroduced to South Africa in 1994 with great fanfare and political correctness.

He had the Pepsi. He wanted cigarettes and breakfast. A homeless man took police in two states on a meandering, 100-mile-long chase yesterday morning after driving away with a Pepsi delivery truck that was briefly left unattended in Northeast Philadelphia. The chase ended on the Atlantic City Expressway, near Hammonton, when the man agreed to stop for a cigarette and breakfast. Michael F. Henry, 37, whose last known address was in Bensalem Township, was arrested and charged with receiving stolen property, eluding police, speeding and careless driving.

Honickman Group, of Pennsauken, will acquire Pepsi-Cola bottling operations on Long Island, N.Y., from another independent bottler, Pepsi Bottling Ventures L.L.C. (PBV). Terms of the transaction, expected to be completed during the second quarter, were not disclosed. Honickman's Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. of New York currently operates in New York City's five boroughs and Westchester County. "Nassau and Suffolk counties provide the requisite scale for us to reinvest significantly in our make-sell-deliver capabilities and partner with PepsiCo to proudly reinvigorate our presence in the greater New York market," said Harold A. Honickman, chairman of the Philadelphia-area's largest soft-drink bottler.

Aramark Corp., one of Philadelphia's largest companies, has hired a former PepsiCo executive to succeed longtime chief executive Joseph Neubauer. Eric J. Foss joined the privately held food-services and facilities-management giant as its new president and CEO Tuesday. Foss, 53, retired as CEO of Pepsi Beverages Co., a $20 billion division of the soft-drink maker, on Dec. 9. That makes the CEO succession at Aramark something of Pepsi generation phenomenon. The 70-year-old Neubauer had held several senior positions at PepsiCo in the 1970s, including the head of its Wilson Sports Goods division before joining what was then called ARA Services at its chief financial officer in 1979.

Sodas, sports drinks and other sugary beverages are an unhealthy choice for kids, according to the nation's leading pediatricians' group, which strictly opposes the sale and advertising of the products in schools. Yet Coca-Cola's Live Positively slogan and the soda-maker's familiar red-and-white logo pop up on the American Academy of Pediatrics' consumer education website, healthychildren.org, in a corporate sponsorship that some health experts denounce as a serious conflict of interest.

I'm not supposed to spoil your viewing experience by telling you what happens on the first two-hour episode of the TV season's biggest new series, The X Factor, which airs at 8 p.m. Wednesday on Fox. But even if Simon Cowell would like you to believe it's totally different from American Idol, you already know what happens, because you know that not even Paula Abdul, in her craziest moment, would make many changes to the formula of...

J ENICE Armstrong's column on the Pepsi Super Bowl ad saying that Pepsi was stereotyping black women is totally absurd. Why can't she just see that it was a funny commercial, and had nothing to do with racial stereotyping? I bet if it was the other way around, a white girl throwing a can of soda at a black girl, she'd be yelling about white supremacy and hearkening back to the days of slavery. If there were no black people in the ad, she'd be complaining that no minorities were used.

HA, HA, HA. I'm laughing and smiling so no one will think I'm one of those angry, mean, overly aggressive, emasculating black women. I've been known to be curt and impatient when stressed, but I'm not an eye-roller or a neck-swiveler even when highly provoked. I know black women who fit that stereotype and who readily admit as much, but even they were incensed by the Pepsi MAX commercial that aired during Sunday's Super Bowl. In that ad, Pepsi not only resurrected the angry black woman, but had her hurling a soda can. In case you missed it, here's the recap: A black woman tries to get her guy to eat better by kicking him, pushing his face in a pie and stuffing his mouth with soap.

This is how you build a neighborhood park in an age when Philadelphia no longer bothers funding such urban niceties: First enter a famous cola-maker's online contest to win micro-financing for good ideas. Next, start a Facebook page. Go to Twitter and blast all your friends. Provide the link to the website of said beverage company (Hint: Starts with P). And, since this is Philly, encourage everyone to vote early and vote often. If this shamelessly promotional social-networking scheme works, then maybe, just maybe, East Passyunk will find itself with $50,000 to turn the chaotic intersection at 12th and Watkins Streets into a "pop-up park" by the end of May. But only if you go to the website and start clicking right away on "Reclaim Concrete," says Clint Randall, a freshly minted urban planner who dreamed up the project - www.refresheverything.

This is how you build a neighborhood park in an age when Philadelphia no longer bothers funding such urban niceties: First enter a famous cola-maker's online contest to win micro-financing for good ideas. Next, start a Facebook page. Go to Twitter and blast all your friends. Provide the link to the website of said beverage company (Hint: Starts with P). And, since this is Philly, encourage everyone to vote early and vote often. If this shamelessly promotional social-networking scheme works, then maybe, just maybe, East Passyunk will find itself with $50,000 to turn the chaotic intersection at 12th and Watkins Streets into a "pop-up park" by the end of May. But only if you go to the website and start clicking right away on "Reclaim Concrete," says Clint Randall, a freshly minted urban planner who dreamed up the project - www.refresheverything.

About 300 workers who produce and deliver soda and other bottled beverages have voted, 141-96, to ratify a four-year contract, ending a monthlong strike at Pennsauken's Beverage Distribution Center. "We fought off the company's attempt to force our members to pay a high cost for their health-care coverage," Dan Grace, principal officer of Teamsters Local 830, said in a statement. Workers had objected to contributing anything to health-care costs, but the company won the right to charge some co-pays, company president Robert Brockway said.

Management at a Pepsi bottling and distribution plant in Pennsauken where union workers have been on strike for three weeks made a conciliatory offer yesterday, and coupled it with one to reduce the union's clout in future contract talks. About 300 loaders, truck drivers, and other members of Teamsters Local 830 who work at Beverage Distribution Center Inc. and its affiliated Pepsi franchise struck Aug. 13 after the company asked them to pay toward health insurance. The strike has caused shortages of Pepsi's specialty flavors in South Jersey, and cut the quantity of all Pepsi products distributed by about one-third, company president Robert Brockway said.